In the previous post, I wrote about the coming cold spell. Well, it came alright, and gave us three days of low (for Texas) winter temperatures. At six a.m. on the 15th, we lost our power and didn’t get it back until 12:45. Almost seven hours brought our temperature in the house down to 50 degrees F. Interestingly enough, not a word was communicated as to why we lost power. We have no idea. So, it came back on at 12:45 and then our furnace ran for the rest of the day, warming the house up. About an hour after the power went out I pulled out the gas-powered generator and with that running we could at least keep the heat on in the greenhouse. See our priorities? We could freeze, but the plants have to stay warm!

The temperature went as low as 17 degrees outside, which is really cold for Texas. Even with the heater on, the greenhouse was down to 36, and some of our plants had a little frostbite. They all survived though, which is great. We’re going to have another cold spell over the next couple days, but not as bad as this last one.

Last winter, while we spent 4 months here in Texas, we had a similar experience. The temperature was down to 18 degrees one morning and the water froze in the camper we were staying in. On Wednesday the 17th, two days ago, our water froze here at the house. The strange part of that is that the temp outside was in the 40’s when it froze. So we crawled under the house again and Barb used her hair dryer to unthaw the pipe. Then we wrapped it with wool blankets. Hopefully that will stop another freeze until we can put pipe wrap on the pipes. Life is always an adventure, isn’t it?

The birds don’t seem to care about the cold. These are Red Wing Blackbirds feasting on out seeds. Since they discovered the feeders they have been here every day.

The next cold spell will be over the weekend and then by Monday, the weather wizards are predicting about three days of rain. They are saying we could get 3 to 5 inches and possibly more. Our yard is going to become Texas’ newest lake.

Tomorrow, we’re going shopping for gutter and cement cutter blades. We’re putting new gutter on the back porch to help keep the porch dry inside. Eventually we hope to have it insulated and usable year round but we have to fix the leaking first. The cement cutter bladers are for cutting out part of our sidewalk in preparation for our new cement slab for the new carport/woodshop building. Our cement guy will be here to begin pouring the pad on January 31st. When they finish with the cement it will have to cure for about 10 days and then our building will be put up. We can’t wait. We really need the space, and a new carport will be great. We’re getting excited for it. We’ll finally have a wood shop again. Woo Hoo!